Labour is divided, poisoned by anti-Semitism, led by a dud and going nowhere.

By Julius Haswell

The word “Corbynista” is one that fills me with more misery than even the phrase “no offence, but…” You just know something annoying is about to happen. But lately I’ve been quite happy to use the word, because the “Corbynistas” I am surrounded by are staying remarkably quiet in light of a passionate Conservative Party Conference.

This may just be the social-media echo-chamber which surrounds my radically Left-wing peers at university, but I’ve started to no longer feel like Conservative supporters are horrible anymore, and it’s an incredibly weird feeling.

By way of explanation, my university is full of supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, to the extent where one self-confessed Blairite commented on a post on Facebook that debating someone was “like talking to a brick wall, with the occasional USSR propaganda slogan thrown over the top of it.” Now when you throw a Conservative like me into the mix, things are going to get a Brian Blessed kind of hairy. You just have to learn to live with it…

I have no “beef” with these people – most of them a vegetarians anyway – but they do provide a valuable insight into the direction of wind amongst the Left-Wing. While a normal day in the library might cough up a “Tory murderer” here, and an Enoch Powell slur there, they seem recently to have taken a bit of a breather.

I almost felt lost, like I needed to check up on them to make sure they were okay. But then the realisation hit me, as to why nobody is complaining about the Tories anymore: embarrassment.

The Left, perhaps regrettably for some, has deserted the working class. Ever since the Brexit vote, there has been a contradictory tone in the Labour camp. While an overwhelming part of the working class voted to leave the EU, the Labour conference still decided to call for a stalling of a clear result. Much of the rhetoric that came from mainstream Labour figures about those who voted to leave the EU was pretty shameful, bordering on offensive, and the country can see that very clearly.

The Labour party’s actions only remove themselves further from those people they claim to support and represent, making it only a party for those who, in the words of one “Corbynista” I sit in lectures with, are educated enough to vote in big decisions like whether or not to stay in the EU.

Come the Tory party conference, and those same left-wingers who misspelt the name of the Minister for Health in a cubicle in the college bar, are suddenly keeping stumm. I don’t for one second believe that the Tory party is split, at least no where near as much as left-wing commentators like Owen Jones like to try and say. The Conservative Party really is relatively united over many things, making the Labour party’s internal struggle seem biblical in comparison.

On top of that, now the policies we hear from the “horrible, dangerous right-wing” are about inclusion and equality. Exactly the policies that are going to win us the centre-ground, including the working-class voters abandoned by Labour, the exact same centre-ground that Corbyn supporters two weeks ago had the gall to say didn’t even exist.

The situation is like inside a supermarket where a cashier is looking after a lost, crying child, while the mother was busy complaining about an employee who hadn’t worked there for 5 years. The Labour party simply has nothing to complain to the Tories about anymore.

What I now see amongst my Labour peers is this: they are realising that the game is up, and all they have left are a few fairly fragile straws to clutch on. The once strong Labour party of Tony Blair, which showed them all they needed to know about winning elections, is a ruin, and whereas the rallying call for revolution heard from Corbyn last year may have brought a tear to the eye of a once politically uninterested student, they have woken up from their dream to face the cold morning.

We could have been blown apart a few months ago. There was Cameron leaving, there was the whole Gove-Johnson heavyweight title match, and there was the Leadsom and May saga which was, to be honest, not exactly Braveheart when it comes to being inspiring. The Tories as a party “lost” the referendum, and we were split beyond measure. With the right leader, the right and left could have been in opposite situations. All but the true die-hard Corbynistas are now realising this reality, that the Conservatives are in it for the long haul, and the Labour Party, with its anti-semitism turmoil, leadership crisis, and ship-diving MPs, can’t do anything about it.

Julius is a student studying at Cambridge University. He worked for Zac Goldsmith before heading up to University. Here, he combines his love of politics and German (his degree), with his love of music. Follow him on Twitter: @JuliusHaswell